By Nick Balazs
Crash Midnight has released their new single "Strung Out On Sunset" - a song that’s brought down the house live in Las Vegas for the past two years, becoming an indelible staple of the band's set. Inspired by a hedonistic 48 hours singer, Shaun Soho, spent on the streets of Hollywood, "Strung Out On Sunset" paints a dark picture of life after the curtain falls. A raw introspective on the disillusionment grown from chasing ghosts, coming to the cold realization that the past is gone and the only way forward is to bury it all under your next step.
Talking about the story behind the song, Soho says, "The initial idea came from being stretched way too thin the morning after back-to-back nights partying in Hollywood and trying to get myself together as the sun was coming up. I remember finally going to get something to eat and being so literally strung out that I was just shaking and blinking in this hollow morning light as I was coming out of, I think ...Rock & Reilly's or something, maybe when they used to be open earlier? Anyhow it was one of those spots right up the street from The Whisky and kind of like while I was trying to steady myself there on the sidewalk, the idea for this thing came to me."
He goes on, "but it was really just a rough concept for a song title or direction, you know? What's more interesting to me now is how the song has developed and taken on a much more self-reflective meaning as the band's established itself out here in Las Vegas. Coming from Boston, there was a bit of lionizing what we thought was that mecca for Rock out there on the Sunset Strip - hearing all the old stories and feeling like that's where all the action was.
“After moving out here and getting to see everything first hand, it's sad what that area has become. It's basically devolved into a tourist trap for 80's metal enthusiasts. The place is absolutely dead and there's just no coming back at this point. Something that was so cool from like the 60's, 70's, 80's - it's depressing to see how irrelevant it's become.
“Then you combine that sort of sentiment with having now played with some of those acts from that era here in Vegas, and I mean some of them were really great and totally still have it - Tesla for example is awesome and they were great to us - but others that we opened for, it was like we knew what the venue was paying them, thousands of dollars, and we were the ones bringing all the fans. Really disenchanting, you know? Like some big names, and they can't draw anyone and we're out here at that time getting a tiny fraction of what they were getting paid in order for us to fill a room to make it look like they had a crowd.
“That, to me, is what this song is about now - being strung along and sold on this mythos of some of these acts. These are guys you maybe looked up to when you were a kid and now seeing, not necessarily the bands themselves, but their management or booking agent try to feed you some bullshit about how amazing an opportunity it'll be to play a show with these guys while we do the heavy lifting on the draw. It's like, tell them to bring all the people if you're paying them that much. It honestly got exhausting being asked to try to make acts that haven't had a song on the radio in 3 or 4 decades look relevant by letting them headline in front of our crowd. So yeah, for me the song has become something of a vent on how over the propaganda of that scene we are - the bloom is thoroughly off the rose I guess you could say."
The singer also caught up with BraveWords’ Nick Balazs to talk more about the song and all things happening in the world of Crash Midnight.
BraveWords: The song certainly fits a different mood than your other tracks, but still rests in the Crash Midnight framework, how has the band evolved as songwriters in the past few years?
“It's funny, a lot of these songs - the "newer ones" - are actually pretty old. Sunset was originally inspired like 8 or 9 years ago before we even made the move to Vegas. So I guess our sound has been evolving for a while, but maybe our recording schedule hasn't gone as fast as the writing. It's cool though because that space has given us a lot more time to work with each song. We played Sunset live for like 2 or 3 years at least before we started tracking it. That's been a big part of our process, trying out these songs a bunch live and seeing what works and what doesn't. Moving out west has had a big impact on our songwriting and subject matter especially, but I think the process we've established with our co-producer, Tristan ‘Rock’ Hardin, over at the Hideout Recording Studio has been the key to taking our sound to another level. We're able to pretty much work like bands used to back in the day with year long lockouts, just because we have access to this top of the line studio right down the street and can sort of chip away at each song as we come up with ideas instead of being forced to cram a whole album recording into a week or long weekend recording session.”
BraveWords: This is your first song release of 2024 – how many more are planned for this year and when can fans expect the next one?
“Our plan is always to get four singles out each year, roughly once a quarter. We're not amazing at following plans though. There have been some external factors in that over 2020 and things like that - definitely threw some obstacles into the gameplan - but we're really shooting to keep it more or less on track going forward. We have two songs with the drums already tracked and we're finalizing a few things with the guitars before knocking those out. Then we have about five more songs ready to start installing into the live set, which is still the process we want to stick to so we can run these things through some paces live before we finalize everything. Shooting for four songs including Sunset in 2024, we'll see how we do.”
BraveWords: There has been much controversy around the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) and its use in making art and music. What is your stance on it?
“Man, I have no idea what's going to happen with that. Seems like playing with a lot of fire. I saw some commercial with a fake AI Joe Rogan plugging a product. That gets scary. As far as music goes, we'll see. I still think the one thing rock music in general has going for it, for those of us still emphasizing this, is the live show. You can't fake that, especially the spontaneity and raw moments. That's what our fans come out for each night. Nothing is ever scripted with us so you won't get the same performance twice.”
BraveWords: Besides new music, what’s in the future plans for Crash Midnight – when can fans expect to see you play live?
“We're right in the middle of setting up an ongoing concert series with our friend Nathan Grates - who is one of the owners of The Sand Dollar Downtown in The Plaza Hotel & Casino - along with Brandon ‘Gooch’ Hahn from Vegas's KOMP 92.3 Active Rock station. It's going to be something special that will really bring the rock scene together here in Las Vegas. Having KOMP getting front and center with these shows is going to be very cool. It puts the station right in the middle of the lifeblood of this rock scene and there's no better place to do it than at the amazing venue Nathan and company have set up in the Plaza. Top end sound and lighting, great 500 seater venue. That environment is perfect to become the new clubhouse for modern rock downtown. We're looking at setting up to play there multiple times a month while bringing in some of the best artists in the national Active Rock touring market. Keep an eye out for the first show announcements coming early this year.”
Keep up to date with CM at crashmidnight.com.
